Abstract

The first integrated reports were published in the early 2000’s by corporate pioneers determined to provide information that would improve their shareholders’ and stakeholders’ understanding of the company. The International Integrated Reporting Framework was released in December 2013 to provide organizations with guidance on the content of an integrated report. This paper explores that extent to which companies around the world are using the framework to prepare their reports and whether country-to-country differences exist in the content and quality of integrated reports. The authors selected five companies from each of the following countries: Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea, United Kingdom, and the United States for the study. A 0-3 scale was used to evaluate five areas of disclosure — Materiality, Risks and opportunities, Strategy and resource allocation, Performance, and Outlook. We found that countries could be fairly clearly grouped into three categories of qualities of disclosure: High (Germany, the Netherlands, and South Africa), Medium (France, Italy, South Korea, and the United Kingdom), and Low (Brazil, Japan, and the United States). We provide some preliminary views on the reasons for these differences.

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